With hurricane season around the corner, T-Mobile has provided a look into how it prepares for the worst.

Whenever a hurricane is forecast to hit land, T-Mo sets up an engineering command center near the area that the hurricane is expected to arrive. There are Network Operation Centers that are monitoring network traffic as well as workers that are ready to roll out back-up power and Cell on Wheels.

Here’s what T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray had to say about T-Mo’s hurricane prep:

“We know how critical it is to stay connected with the people you care about—especially in an emergency. Day in and day out, this team works incredibly hard to deliver the best possible network experience to our customers. And, when the weather turns nasty, we go into overdrive to keep our network running and keep you connected when you need it most.”

It’s no surprise that T-Mobile prepares for hurricane season, as it could be pretty disastrous for customers if it wasn’t prepped and then had to respond. Still, it’s interesting to get a peek inside a Network Operation Center and see all of the people and equipment that are monitoring the network during a hurricane or similar event.

To see a video of the inside of a T-Mo Network Operation Center, click here. Have you ever used T-Mobile or another carrier during a natural disaster?

Looks like any other well-greased NOC out there, albeit eerily quiet. If you look carefully, you can see one guy on Skype for business/Lync with quite a few active chats open.

On the other hand, I suspect the yellow NOC out there doesn’t run quite as well. Maybe better now that the yogurt and water bottles are gone.

John

LOL. Love your sense of humor.

JLP474

Skype for business/Lync is what we use for internal(and external) communication. We have multiple NOCs in various areas of the country.

Johnnola504

A little narration would have been nice.

Jason

Not really impressed. A walkthrough or narration would have been more interesting. It was just a video of a bunch of overweight people typing quickly and trying to look busy for the video crew.

Bob Brown

Yes, I used T-Mobile during a natural disaster. Was Nov 17 2013, after the Washington, Illinois tornado. I had T-Mobile reception, despite power outage. Verizon & AT&T phones were out because their towers were out.

I used T-mobile during hurricane sandy in NJ, it and every other carrier was out almost everwhere.
but their was one tower in the area I lived in operating at low power I think.
I drove their a few times to keep friends and family updated on my condition before eventually driving to west jersey (where some family llived and still had power) after 3 days without power

maximus1901

I wonder if they use this to monitor downtown Chicago speeds. I’m assuming there’s a disaster tgere bc of the 0.1mbps speeds.

Backup power

Nothing like AT&T. Verizon and AT&T not only have multiple NOC’s but have quite a few mobile command centers that can be set up very quickly. They have well published drills you can look up and see how their ERT handles natural disasters and restoring communication real quickly.

Verizon also has the highest number of generators at the actual cell sites.
Most T-Mobile cell sites at most have 4-8 hours of battery backup.

After the 4/27/11 tornado hit, the only services that stayed up were AT&T and Verizon because they had generators, and the had COWS set up within hours in the areas that had cell sites destroyed.
A landline will typically work better if the lines are still up.

Shane

What the hell happened to Tmonews? This is the most boring site now.

Randy’s Buddy

It was also reported that Neville Ray sold 60,000 shares of stock last week; totalling $500,000. It wasn’t as much as Tom Keys, a director of indirect sales. He sold over $2,800,000 in stock.

Look at it this way- if coverage can’t be fixed with a hammer, or a cheaper phone or rateplan, the problem is with the network.

John Brown

I used Old Cricket during the 2012 tornado outbreak. I didn’t have a good experience. I was in a partner coverage area and couldn’t make or receive calls because the Sprint network was down throughout the entire Cincinnati region.

I do miss Old Cricket though. It was a hell of a lot better than dealing with the death star. It’s a shame they sold out.

seattleboi1982

AT&T’s GNOC is cooler.

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